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Republican Senator Mitch McConnell has criticised a sweeping voting rights proposal as a “solution in search of a problem” despite more than 250 proposals in statehouses across the US to restrict ballot access.
He called the measure an attempt among congressional Democrats to “rewrite the rules of our system” as he claimed that GOP lawmakers “are not engaging in trying to suppress voters, whatsoever.”
His comments preceded a Senate Rules Committee hearing on S1, or the For the People Act, which would adopt the largest voting rights and election protection rules since the passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act, if signed into law.
The measure serves as an antidote to the wave of suppressive voting rights measures in at least 43 state legislatures, propelled by spurious claims of voting “irregularities” in 2020 elections and Donald Trump’s loss in the presidential race.
The For The People Act would standardise voting access at the federal level, eliminate long-standing barriers to voting and allow candidates with smaller platforms to wield more political power, among other provisions.
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called proposals in Arizona – which has proposed banning automatic and same-day voter registration and notarisation for mail-in ballots – “the most despicable thing I’ve seen in all my years.”
Mr Schumer said “the most reprehensible effort of all may be found in Georgia,” where lawmakers are mulling a massive omnibus elections bill that would give the state broad authority over local election officials, limit early voting periods and add voter ID requirements for mail-in ballots.
“This is infuriating,” he said.
Committee chair Amy Klobuchar condemned GOP officials invoking the word “chaos” to describe the impact of the For The People Act, adding that “chaos” is nationwide efforts to purge voter rolls for “inactive” voters, cut absentee ballot drop-off boxes in large counties like an attempt in Texas, hours-long lines to vote in states across the US, and discriminatory voter ID laws like one that was struck down in North Carolina by a judge who said it was engineered with “surgical precision” to discriminate against African Americans.
“What this bill tries to do is simply make it easier for people to vote, and take the best practices we’ve seen across the country and put it into law,” she said.
Democrats and voting rights advocates have argued that legislation across the US – drawing on decades of suppression legislation – is emboldened by the former president’s persistent lie that the election was stolen from him, Republican state lawmakers across the US attempting to do what Mr Trump and his attorneys could not.
Michael Waldman, president of Brennan Center for Justice, which has analysed the state of voting rights legislation and ballot restrictions across the US, called S1 “the next great civil rights bill.”
“This legislation would stop this wave of voter suppression cold. It stops it in its tracks,” he said.
An analysis from the Voter Protection Program of the For The People Act’s impacts among nine states reports that “America faces a stark choice between embracing a dangerous, Big Lie-based anti-voter ideology, or one that empowers the American voter and secures our democracy.”
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